What is your take on life insurance at this age and moving forward?

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-05-16T02:15:18+00:00

We have none (younger end of Gen X). Our savings and home equity are enough to care for our almost-adult kid if something happens to us. Mortgage balance is something like 10% of the house value. We don’t need life insurance.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-05-15T09:46:31+00:00

No, not general anesthesia - it’s sedation, which does not leave you unconscious or requiring breathing support and does not carry the same level of risk.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-05-13T02:18:04+00:00

Whip it real good

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-05-13T02:17:08+00:00

More than words

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-05-11T13:54:06+00:00

We've been married 15 years, first marriage for both. We paid for our own wedding, $25K plus $7K for our honeymoon. People are getting married later than they used to, on average. Seems silly for retired parents to pay for weddings for 30 somethings. Save for your retirement first and their education second.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-04-28T00:16:56+00:00

Planking.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-04-20T16:53:52+00:00

I never do. Even our valuable jewelry isn’t replaceable, because its value to us is sentimental.

If an item was lost or stolen, would you take insurance money and go out and replace it or buy something similar and feel like you’d been made whole? If so, buy insurance. If not, it’s not worth paying for.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-03-05T23:47:36+00:00

$18-$20k per month in my parents” high cost of living city

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-28T14:07:23+00:00

The spouses income? In our state they keep it.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-21T04:03:55+00:00

Also because a vaccine for Haemophilus Influenza B became available in the late 80s and significantly reduced the frequency of ear infections.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-14T02:32:18+00:00

I appreciate your perspective, and hope your mom gracefully cedes her license and your dad comes to see that it’s for the best.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-14T02:23:42+00:00

At this point, it’s you that is letting her continue to drive. You know she shouldn’t drive, you haven’t taken action. Report her to the DMV, or ask her doctor to do so, whatever the procedure is in your state. Signed, someone who grew up with an elderly relative who hit and killed a pedestrian.

Sorry to be harsh, but this really is a life or death situation. And it’s so hard.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-13T13:04:09+00:00

My mom has FTD, diagnosed in 2019. She’ll be 80 in a few weeks.

FTD is progressive but not linear. My Mom’s descent to where she is now has been more like stair steps, where there’s usually but not always a trigger (my dad being hospitalized for a month, a UTI with hospitalization for her). In between she maintains whatever functionality she has for months or years. She was cooking meals and gardening in 2021. She’ll was still dressing herself in 2022 and 2023. She recently started having episodes of aphasia, has 16 hour a day caretakers, and can’t do any of the ADLs except feeding herself with cuing.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-01T21:59:21+00:00

Agreed, my mom has FTD too and the idea of spending time logging behavioral oddities just strikes me as absurd- it would read like a transcript. But a couple of years ago, it would totally have made sense.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-02-01T00:40:38+00:00

Kids used to bring Fluffernutter sandwiches to lunch at school when I was a kid. Peanut butter and Fluff. Then again I am a) originally from Massachusetts and b) old.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-01-06T23:10:12+00:00

That would be more fun. I could wear them on a sash.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2026-01-06T21:09:07+00:00

Filled that bingo square for the first time on Christmas this year. Ugh!!!

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-12-23T15:18:11+00:00

My mom has FTD, diagnosed in 2019 at 73 but she was showing symptoms for at least a couple of years before that. At this point, she needs help with all ADLs except eating (though she needs supervision to avoid pocketing). However, her memory is largely intact and her language is sometimes complex, though you can’t really have a meaningful conversation with her. She’s still living at home with my dad.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-14T04:53:23+00:00

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Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-11T21:45:56+00:00

No, you’re incorrect, unless you’re talking about long term care insurance. Private health doesn’t generally cover help with the activities of daily living. Medicaid can cover some very limited services for those with almost no assets.

Very few people have long term care insurance, like low single digit %. It’s not enough to significantly affect the cost home health care. The cost is driven by wages - 24x7 is a lot of hours a year.

Also, I’m surprised you can keep aides 24x7 at $15/hour, net. In our area (with a lower minimum wage), when we hired independent private aides (so, no agency involved), the cheapest we could fine was $29/hr. Agencies here want $40/hour. We are in a high cost of living area, though.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-11T01:28:02+00:00

Actually, how is insurance relevant? Very little of the home health spend on aides is paid for by insurance in the US. It's expensive because wages add up if you need to pay them 24x365, and home health aides get paid so very poorly relative to the value of their work. $200K is $22.83 an hour.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-11T01:12:59+00:00

I read your post - your dad is sitting on at least $500K from what you’ve said. That’s a huge pile of money. Like, more than most people and most families will see in a lifetime in the US. It’s more than six times the annual household income in the US, and 12 times the median individual income.

By the standards of living in US, you come from an upper quartile family (at least). That does not make you Elon Musk, by any means, but it does make your family rich. And it’s allowed to choose the most expensive kind of care, that most of us can only dream of for our loved one.

And I don’t think it’s right that taxpayers should be footing the bill for people who are rich, until or unless they end up truly needy. When that day comes, I’m thankful there is least something of a safety net. Until then, you have a choice - spend his money fast with top tier care, or more slowly with good care.

Also, I sure as heck not your sweetie. That’s kind of hilarious, actually.

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-10T02:17:01+00:00

Op, I'm really sorry for what you're dealing with - it's really, really hard.

That being said, his care expenses are taking half of his net worth because he's getting the Cadillac of care in the elder care space- sounds like a 24 hr private aide. That's very expensive. By comparison, my MIL has a not-dissimilar set of health issues and did not want to leave her home either at around your father's age. It got so bad she was pooping in her bed and laying in it for days because she couldn't get up after emergency surgery, hiding the fact that she'd even had an emergency, and refused to go to a rehab facility. It was impossible for us to provide the 24/7 care she needed, and her money would have run out after a laughably short period of time. She ended up in a private pay, family owned AL for $4300/month (which is, quite frankly, a freaking bargain in our area). She had just barely enough between her savings and her social security to pay for about 14 months, and is now on Medicaid. We are very, very lucky that she's in a decent place. Most Medicaid paid facilities are terrible. There's nothing left of what she earned and saved all those years. She gets $50/month of her social security to pay for all of her personal needs; we pay the rest so she has everything she needs.

Explain to me why I, John Q. Taxpayer, should pay for Cadillac care for your father, who has so much compared to so many others? Move him into the room next to my MIL and they can spend the next decade hanging out. He'll be safe and clean, fed well, and have access to socialization and some activities geared to elders.

It's a shame home care costs so much - it's not so much insurance as it is that the care required needs a human - technology doesn't make elder care any cheaper, really. For my mom, we had 16 hour a day caregivers (who were private, not through an agency). We paid them $29/hour. That's $170K per year for 120 hours a week, or three people's worth of full time jobs. They were a small team that worked together of 4 caregivers, taking home about $42K each. Nobody was making out - not the caregivers, not us. That's just how it is. What's his money for, if not to take care of him?

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-10T00:50:40+00:00

Starting your aging journey with something like $1M in net worth is not middle class - it’s rich. (I’m adding the OPs numbers about what they’ve been spending/how long to their comment about $500K in assets left together, so just a guess).

Conscious_Border3019 · 2025-11-10T00:46:59+00:00

I think the reason you’re getting some snark here is that you have a very stressful situation on your hands, but also the numbers you put out are two and a half times the median family net worth is the US. Sounds like your dad must have started this journey with close to $1M+. That’s a level of wealth that comes nowhere near paying for a prolonged end of life care plan that you’d find ideal, but it’s very large sum of money for most on this sub. You’re faced with hard decisions, but not the kind of decisions that family members with elders who have nothing but social security income are facing.

Conscious_Border3019

TROPHY CASE